Universal Blackness
by Kyence
Summary: Track 5. A Yurak backstory: being part of an engineered composite race doesn't make life easier when the parent races are at war and mutually hate his kind. How did he end up with cybernetic body parts, and why is he so loyal to Zarkon on the show?


My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult: _I See Good Spirits & I See Bad Spirits_

Theme: Doomite backstories of youth

Genre: Action/Comedy

Date of Completion: May 13, 2008

Universal Blackness, by Kyence

Disclaimer: Characters are property of World Events Productions. The lyrics are property of Sleazebox Music & BMI.

_Escape._ A single, simple thought that raced through his Drule mind endlessly. The infantryman had long since been separated from the rest of his unit; the lack of gunfire could only mean one thing: the Natives had silenced them. He huddled in the natural camouflage of oversized flora that thrived on the uncomfortably moist climate, his breaths long and low. The enemy was close, close enough that he did not need the confirmation of the integrated radar in his gauntlet.

A flash of blue fur. Not a Native: one of those foul half-breed Duonulans! Did it see him, hear him; was it worth shooting the aberration and alerting the more formidable creatures nearby?

Yurak was thrilled. He was finally allowed to partake in combat! His youthful exuberance fueled his senses. His sight was shaper than it had ever been before, and his hearing...a rustle in that distant bush. His large, precise ears picked up the distinctive sound of stems sliding across metal. A Drule soldier, no doubt about it. No need to investigate any closer: he quickly aimed his rudimentary firearm at the center of the plant and fired two shots. He hoped the would be rewarded with the smell of blood, not robotic ooze.

--

"Excellent, Yurak! Your first time out and you capture a soldier!" Meyetu held her adopted son with ferocious affection. He could feel the air squeezing out his lungs, and gave his usual nudge to release him. It was awfully embarrassing for her to do that in front of the others.

"I am a warrior now, Meteria Meyetu! I live to serve our cause, the cause of the Pirate King!" He saluted, two of his fingers pointed straight across his chest. Certainly no one here could do it as well as he, not with those webbed fingers of theirs.

A looming shadow cast its pall over him, spiking the fur covering his body. The room full of Natives chuckled at the sight, while Meyetu shook her head in exasperation. "Do I frighten you, half-breed?"

"I am NOT a half-breed, Ithunee!" he shouted up angrily at his insulter. The cold slit yellow eyes narrowed in the scaled face. "You, and all your Duonulan kind, are the children of rape at the hands of the Drule. No, even less than that: they stole our flesh, and blended it with theirs using their horrid machines. You aren't children, and you certainly aren't a race. You are "homunculi" at best." With that he flexed the muscles in his arms so his spiky fins sprang out precariously; a visible electric charge skipped across the webs of his blue fingers. "And I will not be yelled at by the furry putty mold of a Drule!"

"You started it, frog!"

"Enough of this!" Meyetu's own blast of electricity traveled far enough to the bickering adolescents for them to decide jumping out the way was best for their collective health. The others went to the side of Ithunee, giving him looks and gestures that said on the surface to not anger Meyetu. But Yurak knew that they meant that they did not like him around them either.

--

"Eat up, prisoner."

He groaned as a bowl of what he assumed was gruel dropped at his feet. He turned his head away, fingering the stump where his right knee once was.

"I'm a good shot, huh?"

The Drule's face was an inch away from Yurak's, the red eyes scouring his yellow.

"A good thing these bars separate us," Yurak added in hindsight as he heartily tapped them. "You are pretty quick for an amputee; you leaped at me. Thought it took two legs to do that."

The soldier kept silent.

Not deterred a whit, Yurak chanced the question, "Do you know any free Duonulans in the Drule Empire?"

After a moment that tried to drag minutes along with it, the soldier answered, "Yes."

Yurak leaned instinctively closer. Some of his forearm's fur grazed past the bars.

"They're dead!" A piercing pain seized his right arm. Howling, he clutched his extensor as he barely bled, a comical contrast to the pain. "What is this?" he pulled out a tiny needle.

"An inoculation."

"Of what?" Yurak growled, his canine teeth bared, his lips parted.

The soldier's cold smile chilled him. "An inducer of VCS. Let's see how much of a Drule you really are, Duonulan."

Yurak snorted, flipping the needle skillfully in his right fingers. "We Duonulan have the blood of the Natives. You should know better." He flicked the needle into a distant corner. "Just in case you have second thoughts about using it on yourself, the way your superiors meant it to be used." His mane was covered in sweat, sloshing into his eyes. The initial pain in his arm was subsiding; what a stupid Drule! He rubbed his eye as he marched confidently away from the prison cell.

The soldier sat back, the sardonic smile still stretching his face. He knew the inoculation was intended to be used when captured so that the resulting illness would cause his immediate death, insanity, or physical mutations that would make him a killing machine. He had forsaken all those possibilities in the distant hope of seeing that little bastard suffer.

--

"Uggh, what is wrong with him?" Yurak could hear the voice, distant and fuzzy to him. Rather odd: his hearing was always pristine. Come to think of it, where was he? Was he lying down? It didn't feel like he was. What was he looking at in front of him? Everything looked strange. Blurred. The colors were all wrong.

"Stop daydreaming you fool!" Ithanee slapped him on the back. "You've been acting strange for the past couple of days. What's the matter with you?"

Yurak kept his eyes shut, shook his head vigorously. "Nothing."

Ithanee sniffed at the air, "When do you that, you send fur and dander flying everywhere." Disdain dripped from his words as he added, "You've been staring at this tree for three hours now; Meteria Meyetu has been calling for her 'warrior.' What are you waiting for?"

Yurak turned around without a retort and headed to the camp. He did not hasten to his Meteria. He did not make for his quarters. Ithanee witnessed him enter the prisoner's area.

"So, you think you can do whatever you please, tiny beast?" he spat, and followed a short distance behind.

--

"How goes the metamorphosis? Are you one of the Blessèd, or one of the Unfortunates?" the Drule captive greeted with mirth.

Without a reply, Yurak walked to the door, and opened it. He stepped inside, his drooping right eyelid fluttering. His left eye was alert, vindictive. He gingerly removed his right glove and rolled up his sleeve. Only patches of his blue fur remained, his once cerulean skin now a deep plum. Veins, capillaries built atop each other in a grotesque lattice. His eye flew open: an equally disturbing organ of the same color flooded his vision with madness.

Ithanee did not hesitate upon seeing that arm. With precision, his fin spines sliced through the muscle and degenerated bone with considerable ease. His accompanying roar garnered him Meyetu as a spectator.

As Yurak collapsed from shock in her arms, he heard the soldier's final words before Ithanee ripped the Drule's throat out.

"I guess this makes us brothers, cripple."

--

He groggily came to. Thankfully, Meteria Meyetu had a habit of low lighting. He was on his own sleeping mat; he could feel it. Both his eyes began to open in unison, but that dreaded color and visions of otherworldly things terrified him. He covered his eyes with his hands. Or tried to: his guilty eye had nothing to cover it. Why wasn't his arm working? He turned his head, and through the imagery of demons twisting about, welcoming him to the fold, he saw his arm from just below the shoulder was no more. Gone. He couldn't believe it, could not remember where it had went. Meanwhile, the hallucinations mutely giggled, pointing to his ears, that they would be their next pickings. Did they eat his arm?

"Listen to him, Meteria! The boy is insane!" Eshu, Ithanee's mother proclaimed. "You must end his suffering, and we must burn his corpse!" Meyetu, leader of their tribe, hesitated. "I do not think that it is necessary."

"You don't think so?" Eshu was incredulous. "You don't think so? What if that, that _germ,_ can now find it's way into us? Our natural defense is the only thing the Drules could never take away from us, and now this _thing _proves that the Duonulans should be reviled and exterminated like the vermin they are!"

"I have a solution." The booming voice commanded attention and respect from all within earshot. Meteria Meyetu and Eshu bowed. "We are honored by your presence, Pirate King."

He waved them up, with Ithanee in tow. "My forces have been successful in securing this province from further Drule incursions; I take it you've routed out the red-eyed _vermin _," he cast a fierce glare at Eshu, who gulped. His height and stride length only required him to take a couple of steps before she could count the smooth scales on his young male face. "So, you do not like the prospect of a Duonulan king, even one who will allow the parent race to rebound from the brink of extinction?"

Eshu could not match his gaze, "You are of a different mold, sire. I apologize." Ithanee's large draconic ears flushed at his mother's apology.

"Indeed." He approached Meyetu. "You sent a request for a healer specializing in Drule illnesses; such requests are flagged and require my approval, and kept confidential. I have a personal interest in seeing such manifestations." He focused his attention on the mumbling Yurak. "I have heard of later Duonulan children being susceptible to the Varhellis plague. This is not as rare as any of us would like, but I have been able to suppress the dissemination of this fact from the Drule Proper."

"Your strong, noble, yet humble heart precedes you, Pirate King. Can he be cured?" Meyetu asked with more than a hint of concern. He shook his head, "Whatever tissue is infected can't be cured, but this disease localizes for a while. He has a strong chance of surviving this if we can keep it isolated. But I will require your assistance. And Eshu's as well. Ithanee, leave."

All did as they were ordered. "Meyetu, hold him down, and keep his his head straight. Eshu, hold his legs." The king rolled up his sleeve and brandished his own spines, albeit quite smaller than the full-blooded teenage Ithanee's. Yet, they pulsed with a faint incandescent glow of energy. The women did not take much notice.

"What's his name?" Yurak heard the question, but could not see through the haze. The query cleared his thoughts. "I am Yurak," he replied weakly.

"Yurak, I am the Pirate King Zarkon. I have a test of loyalty for you. Answer me truthfully, and I will reward you. Understand?" He could not see the slight curl of the monarch's lip.

Yurak nodded a bit, as much as Meyetu's grip would permit. Zarkon placed a spine over Yurak's left eye. "Do you see Vajel?"

Eshu and Meyetu looked uneasy. Somehow Yurak knew exactly what his liege meant, what those dancing, teasing, beckoning sprites were, _who _they were. He nodded.

"Mhmm." Zarkon moved his spine over. "And now?"

The spine's emanation was causing the apparitions to scatter about his vision, trapped in a panic like fish in a shallow lake. Their euphoria was now their prison and their crypt. Vajel knew it.

"Trying to leave..."

"Easily arranged." Yurak felt a blinding white pain in his skull before the air current hit his empty socket.

--

In the throne room of Castle Dhm, King Zarkon looked favoringly at his newest commander. "You have given the Dhm Empire countless victories in the years since you left Opachre. I expect nothing less from you as the Royal Fleet Commander, Yurak."

The red cybernetic eye registered the smiling visage as his organic eye closed in respect. His mechanical arm hummed its technological savvy as he saluted his King. "I will not fail you, sire."

**Song Credits:**

**UNIVERSAL BLACKNESS**

Written by Buzz McCoy & Groovie Mann

Published by SleazeBox Music / BMI

Vocals - Groovie Mann, Buzz McCoy

Keys & Programming – Buzz McCoy


End file.
